Research In German-speaking Countries Research Articles

Kompetenzdiagnostik im Berufsfeld Pflege

The efficiency and effectiveness of educational programmes in the occupational field of nursing are only assessable through testing and comparing achieved learning results. In search of an appropriate diagnostic instrument, a comprehensive literature research in German-speaking countries concerning the current state of competence diagnostics in the occupational field of nursing had been conducted. Additionally, a similar research of international, professional journals had been done. The investigations lead to the result that a massive gap exists concerning national and international research of systematic, theoretically and empirically well-founded development of instruments measuring nursing competence. Finally, a conclusion for the development of instruments in nursing competence diagnostics is drawn.

“Controlling” as an academic discipline: the development of management accounting and management control research in German-speaking countries between 1970 and 2003

This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the structures and the development of management accounting and management control research in German-speaking countries between 1970 and 2003 as well as to the literature on “Comparative International Accounting History". It is mainly set in the “archive", using published articles and an empirical survey to describe and explain the development of controlling as an academic discipline in German-speaking countries. Eight explorative research questions on the development of the discipline are answered. The analysis covers three perspectives that complement each other: relevant chairs at German-speaking universities (input), German-language publications (output) and citations (outcome) on the subject. The results indicate that controlling has become an established discipline of business administration (Betriebswirtschaftslehre ) in German-speaking countries and can be considered a comparatively young field that has traditionally been highly practice-oriented, but also self-referential and for the most part not integrated into the international community. While publishing and citation patterns have changed over time in German-speaking countries they remain at variance with international management accounting research.

Management Accounting Research in German-Speaking Countries

This paper reviews current research and practice in management accounting in Germany, Austria, and (part of) Switzerland based on 240 management accounting articles by authors affiliated to a German institution, published in the leading German-language journals and in international management accounting journals from 1998 to 2004. I provide insights into the topics, settings, research methods, and underlying theories used in that literature. Economics-based analytical research is the predominant research method and also had the greatest impact in the international journals. Using examples from theory and practice, I discuss potential reasons for these observations, accomplishments, trends, and potential future developments.

Qualitative psychotherapy research in German-speaking countries

The authors present an overview of qualitative psychotherapy research in German-speaking countries. Special attention is paid to specific characteristics of methods, topics, and results, about which little is known in English-speaking countries. The authors describe historical and sociological developments in psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, clinical psychology, and the social sciences relevant to the advancement of qualitative psychotherapy research. They then focus on the development of methods of analyzing and generalizing data obtained from qualitative observations. Finally, they outline the most important topics and results of these methods: first interviews with patients/diagnostics, psychosomatic syndromes, patient's experience of the therapy process, interaction between patient and therapist, therapist's experience of the therapy process, and follow-up research.

Social-psychiatric research in german-speaking countries

This study aims at outlining the development of social-psychiatric research in German-speaking countries between 1975 and 2001. All original articles dealing with social-psychiatric issues, with appeared in Psychiatrische Praxis in the years 1975 - 1977, 1981 - 1983, 1987 - 1989, 1993 - 1995 and 1999 - 2001 were analysed. Mental health care research clearly dominated social-psychiatric research in the period investigated. While in the beginning, most papers were devoted to the conceptualisation and description of psychiatric services, in recent years more studies on outcome evaluation and quality assurance were published. The number of articles on the subjective perspective of patients and relatives has increased constantly. Topics such as treatment satisfaction, subjective illness theory, and subjective quality of life enjoy growing interest. The same holds for stigmatisation of mentally ill people. By contrast, studies investigating psycho-social influences on the development and the course of mental disorders are still very rare. The results are discussed against the backdrop of the development of psychiatry in the period investigated.

Organic mental disorders (Fo). Results from the ICD-10 field trial of the Diagnostic Criteria for Research in German-speaking countries.

The results of the ICD-10 Diagnostic Criteria for Research (DCR) field trial in German-speaking countries concerning section F0 (organic mental disorders) are reported. On the comparatively small data basis of the study, acceptance and interrater-reliability cannot be estimated satisfactorily. Despite this general problem, it can be said that section F0 of ICD-10 DCR maintains a high degree of continuity with respect to ICD-10. Some categories caused diagnostic disturbances and needed further specification, especially the criteria regarding the temporal relationship between the onset of an organic disorder and the psychiatric symptomatology. The recently published definite DCR seem to avoid most of the problems of the earlier version used in this study.

Design of the ICD-10 field trial of the Diagnostic Criteria for Research in German-speaking countries.

The design of the international multicentric field trial on ICD-10, chapter V (F) "Mental and Behavioural Disorders (including disorders of psychological development): Diagnostic Criteria for Research' including some modifications for the study in German-speaking countries is described. The different stages of the study, the assessment instruments, and the database are presented.

Contemporary Legend Research in German-Speaking Countries

Until quite recently, the study of contemporary legends was often considered a stepchild of folk narrative research in the German-speaking countries (Wehse 1990, 67). However, studies of a closely related phenomenon, so-called date back to the early 1930s, and rumours were already being treated at the time of the first world war. The initial focus of this essay will be on these and other early contributions to the field (long before it was recognised and organised as such), and especially on Otto Garner's ideas. I will then discuss more recent works, looking at publications which centre on the collection, description and classification of material, as well as some of the theoretical and critical approaches. I hope to show how themes and genres have changed with the times. The term (Zeitungssage) seems to have been used for the first time by Leopold Schmidt and Alfred Karasek (Schmidt 1932; Karasek 1933a),' but earlier investigations of the phenomenon had been carried out by Otto Gorner and a much more famous scholar-Andre Jolles-in 1930. Garner commented upon the backward-looking approach of folklore research, which was then mainly aimed at the preservation of folklore items considered to be in danger of dying out.2 He seems to have been the first German scholar to ask whether new fairytales, myths and legends, not dependent on the old widespread motifs, could spring up in the modern world. One of the places he found such stories was in the press, in his opinion the most important channel influencing the popular mind (Gbrner 1930, 33-5). As a modern example of legend and horror story, Garner studied the newspaper tale of the cut-off finger. As this does not correspond to the contemporary story of the Severed Fingers3 and I have not been able to find any analogies, I will give a translation of the note which appeared in the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten 6 June 1929:

Die Historische Sozialforschung in den achtziger Jahren: quantitative Analyse eines Forschungsgebietes

For the first time in eight years, a recently published inventory of historical social research in Ger man-speaking countries offered the opportunity to survey the main trends of this field of research in the 1980s. 564 research projects documented in inventory have been ana lyzed statistically; the main results of this quantitative ana lysis are presented in the following paper, which was ori ginally published as introductory article in the inventory1. Historical social research proved to be interdisciplinary with the majority of research projects being pursued by historians; sociologists, political and educational scientists and scholars of other disciplines play an important role in historical social research, too. Compared to social sciences, historical social research is of a more academic character, taking place mainly at universities and often aiming at aca demic graduatioa Research by request by order and teams of two or more researchers are less common than in the social sciences. Historical social research covers a wide range of topics from medieval popular culture to 20th century political parties and from international trade cycles to the social structure of villages, towns and regions. The majority of the projects, however, can be classified to a few main fields of research: historical demography, social struc ture and social change, history of the working class and occupational groups, political parties, elections and parlia ments, and economic history. Two-thirds of the projects are concerned with 19thand 20th-century history, and 80 p.c. deal with the history of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Gathering information from printed and imprinted files and * Address all communications to Dietrich Oberwittler, Markscheide 22, D-45143 Es sen. 1 Informationszentrum Sozialwissenschaften (Bonn) in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Zen trum f?r Historische Sozialforschung (K?ln) und QUANTUM e.V. (K?ln) (Hrsg.), Historische Sozialforschung. Forschungsdokumentation 1982-1990, bearbeitet von Dietrich Oberwittler und Gisela Ross-Strajhar, Bonn 1991.

Innovation in industry: a discussion of the state-of-art and the results of innovation research in german-speaking countries

The subject discussed in this paper is the state-of-the-art and the results of those research activities which concentrate on the process of the research, development and application of new technologies, a process which is influenced by and which depends on a variety of factors. The paper centers around research activities carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970's. On the basis of as many as thirteen problem areas, research activities concerning three system levels are dealt with: manpower and resources directly connected with the innovation process, the organization to which these factors belong and finally the social and natural environment of this organization. In addition to the three levels, on the elements, structure and process variables of which the problem areas are based, the results of the innovation processes, which become apparent in the form of progress and other effects, are discussed. Analysis of the thirteen problem areas shows that the effects of the innovation processes, once they are accomplished, can be examined quite successfully, whereas research on the process itself as well as the influence exerted on this process by the organization and the social environment, have not yet brought about satisfactory empirical results. Although empirical results are available with regard to partial problems, research gaps are abundant in this field. As a consequence, innovation policy rests on a rather uncertain basis.